


The Weight of Her Sins

by sevendeadlyfun



Category: Dollhouse
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-12
Updated: 2012-11-12
Packaged: 2017-11-18 13:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/561454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendeadlyfun/pseuds/sevendeadlyfun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Adelle smiles mirthlessly. Alpha is all of Topher’s best work. Echo is all of Topher’s best work. The entire bloody train ran right off the rails on Topher’s best work. </i> Adelle tries to put the pieces together again. Set during Epitaph 2, with spoilers for the entire series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Weight of Her Sins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sixtywattgloom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixtywattgloom/gifts).



> Many thanks to my beta for all the wonderful assistance!

If leaving the Dollhouse was hard, returning seems well nigh impossible. It isn’t only fear of Butchers and Rossum’s tech that holds them captive. But she has never shrunk from her duty and she shan’t do so now – if Topher needs the resources of the Dollhouse, then she will get them for him. Or die trying. 

She is more than a little convinced it will be the latter fate that awaits her. When they find Alpha running the madhouse, she knows that they are doomed. Absolutely doomed. 

When Alpha finally tells her, she marvels that he has somehow dredged up a morsel of discretion from amongst the psychotic rubble of his many minds and kept the news for her ears only. Years ago, he would have relished sharing all the disturbing details of the poor woman’s fate. Years ago, he would have been the cause of her death and not her keeper.

_Pretty maids all in a row, he reminds her. Lined up and waiting for their souls._

She thinks she is relieved when Topher doesn’t ask for Doctor Saunders. Relieved his mind has shattered so far beyond repair that he no longer remembers to care. She no longer has the support of a stiff drink and she finds it almost impossible to hold on to all these little lies alone. 

_Whiskey. Her name was Whiskey, he will whisper to her later._

She can’t imagine how she would explain another death to the fragile boy-man who shakes in her arms. What would it do to him, she wonders, to know that the broken woman they left behind died defending their house of horrors? She does not wonder what the knowledge will do to her. She long ago accepted the weight of her sins and fancies that she could not have survived so long in their nightmare world without them.

The weight of her sins add heft to the blows she rains down on Rossum. They numb her arms as she holds Topher in his moments of despair. They are so much a part of her that to lay their burden down is now unthinkable.

But she is tired. It’s all so much worse when she’s tired. She isn’t sure she’s ready to see their broken doll, but she can’t refuse. There are many epithets one can truthfully append to her name - _Monsters. We are monsters._ \- but coward is not one she can bear to claim. 

“It was quick,” Alpha assures her, his voice low. “She drifted off painlessly.”

“Yes,” Adelle replies, her expression hard. “Whatever else you can say about us, we do try to kill you kindly.”

He can only dip his head in acknowledgement of the truth. He knows, so much better than most, how kindly they can kill. They provided gourmet meals and world-class masseurs as they sweetly siphoned away the dolls’ lives.

She glides her hand a hairsbreadth over the cold, still face - marvels at the almost imperceptible tremor that curls and flexes her fingers. So much death; so many gone, wiped away as if they had never been and yet she is still somehow shaken.  
She is careworn, frayed on all her edges. She lets her hand fall to her side, dangling uselessly. 

She feels fingers brushing lightly against hers. She gently closes her hand, feeling oddly touched by the tremulous, clammy embrace. She would rather he were not here and yet she cannot think where else he would go.

_I got Saunders out, he yells over the rush and press of fleeing humanity._

“I’m sorry, darling, “ she says and she is glad her voice does not quiver. “I didn’t mean to be gone so long.”

His hand pulls against hers, a steady insistent tug, and she allows the relentless motion to guide her away. She long ago gave up her autonomy in the face of his overwhelming need – refusal to follow can mean hours or days of anguish and he needs to focus, to fix. She cannot allow anything to derail their fragile progress.

“Have you found something?” she asks. 

“I need more hands,” he tells her. “I need more minds.”

She does not say that they have a hundred hundred minds stored on wedges in the lab. She does not say that they have a dozen mindless bodies wandering the floors of the Dollhouse able to shelter any persona whose help he might require. She is barely ashamed that she thought of that in the first place.

She has sacrificed – will sacrifice – so much to do what must be done. The trail of bodies behind them, the violence, the destruction, the chaos, and the fear are price she has paid and will pay again. She is a good soldier and a poor caretaker of the broken man who leads her up her stairs.

“Who do you need, darling?” she asks him.

He stops and turns but does not look at her, not really. His eyes are always turned inward now. She wonders what he sees. What he is trying not to see.

“Alpha,” he says. “Clever hands. And Bennett.”

“Bennett?” she replies, striving for a light tone that she knows cannot match the startled look she feels on her face. 

She does not say that Bennett is dead. She cannot believe he ever forgets. When everyone else slipped through cracks of his shattered mind, he fought valiantly to hold on to what he could. He remembers her. And she is sure he remembers Bennett.

“Yes,” he says, hands moving in eager pirouettes. “Yes, yes. She’ll have the answer.”

He takes the stairs slowly, but his back is straighter and he moves with purpose. She watches, anxious and eager. She is not maternal. She has never wanted children. But she thinks this must be what mothers feel – he is going to succeed but heaven knows what it will cost. The price ratchets ever higher and they have paid so much already.

How, she thinks, will we ever settle this bill?

“Is it time for my second act?” Alpha’s voice is quiet, but as startling as the crack of a rifle. 

“Was extraordinary hearing ever part of one of your imprints?” she asks, her eyes still fixed on Topher. 

“No,” he says. “But eavesdropping as a skill set? I have, what? At least five imprints worth.”

She nods. It doesn’t really matter now. She is tired, jangly from caffeine and nerves, and very certain she is missing something. 

“Well, as you so correctly noted, Topher would like your assistance.” Her smile is sharp and jagged. “He needs extra hands and he thinks yours are clever.”

“And he would know, “Alpha says. “He’s seen all my best work.”

“Ready to be your best again?” she asks and if her voice is overbright and dangerously brittle, Alpha is wise enough to overlook it.

“I try,” he says. “I try to be my best.” 

Adelle smiles mirthlessly as she watches him bound up the long sweeping staircase. Alpha is all of Topher’s best work. Echo is all of Topher’s best work. The entire bloody train ran right off the rails on Topher’s best work. 

_(I can bring back the world, he tells her over and over. I can fix what we did.)_

She forces herself forward, up the stairs and back down the primrose path. She wonders if Topher’s plan to bring them all back will really work. She wonders what they will do if it doesn’t. 

She wonders what the world will be like tomorrow.


End file.
